


Mistletoe

by somekindofseizure



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Christmas, F/M, First Kiss, MSR, office Christmas party, xmas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-24
Updated: 2017-01-24
Packaged: 2018-09-19 15:41:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9448061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somekindofseizure/pseuds/somekindofseizure





	

She squeezes the middle of the pointy paper cup as she ekes water from the dispenser, wipes a bit of eggnog from the corner of her mouth.  She’s had a bit more than she intended, but what the hell, it’s Christmas. It’s her third year working with Mulder and the first she’s managed to drag him up from the basement on December 20th to eat mass-produced sugar cookies and listen to Jingle Bell Rock like a good co-worker.  They’ve been on opposite sides of the room all night, mingling, as she prescribed – near demanded - they do, making friends, being team players, being regular people for a half hour, an hour tops.

But she finds the party charming – the effort of it all, the playlists and saran-wrapped homemade brownies coated in powdered sugar – so it’s nearly two hours before she finally starts to make her way out of the room.  She looks for Mulder, spots him about to cross through the center of the room, and makes her way to let him know she’s going.  They may not have spent time together here, but she knows he’s been aware of her, thinking of her as a security blanket as he unwraps red and white candies.  Leaving him here alone would be worse than leaving him alone with a man-eating worm, worse than abandoning him on Mars.

The first thing she notices is that Mulder has been grinning as she gives the simple information of her departure.  He’s been looking around the room, rubbing his chin between his forefinger and thumb. People are staring at them with loose-jawed, liquored up smiles, a couple of them hollering and chanting at them like it’s a football game.  Mulder looks at her, then glances up, taking her on a ride as he shares what he’s already learned.  She half-expects to see a UFO when she follows his gaze.   But it’s something far worse - a mistletoe.

He shrugs at her as if by way of apology and then leans forward, grabbing her bicep lightly and pecking her on the cheek.  Their spectators groan, disappointed.  In the moment, she’s angry with them for having fun at her expense, but in later years, she’ll have compassion.  She was their chance to have something to talk about at next year’s party.  She was their cheap thrill.  She was one-half the office’s golden couple who weren’t a couple.

But she doesn’t understand any of that yet, so she scratches behind her ear, feels herself blush in anger and embarrassment and embarrassment at feeling angry.   She nods and smiles at everyone, trying to make the moment pass with her nonchalant disdain, a chemistry of human expression she’s mastered better than anyone this past few years.  Mulder bites his smiling bottom lip - his version of blushing - and she thinks of the partridges in the pear tree.  They are trapped here, in this cage of expectation.  

Well, anyway, it’s Christmas.  So she takes him by the tie – a red silk one, the gift she gave him last year, she notices for the first time today.  She expects him to be surprised, maybe even repulsed, but he seems as though he’s been waiting for her as his hands come to her waist, his fingers spreading from floating ribs to grounded, solid hips, his middle ones following the indentation of her body like the perfectly tailored suit she doesn’t own. 

She keeps her hands resting at his chest at first, noting the softness of his lips, the intrusiveness of his nose, the way it seems both annoying and sexy in the way that it pokes at her cheekbone.  He inhales a strong gust of air through his nose, his hands squeezing tighter around her waist, as if he’s shaping her into a straw, trying to suck her through his closed lips and swallow her like a thick milkshake.  As a matter of competiveness – nothing more, not really, she thinks – she returns the gesture, tugging through a closed mouth, moving her hands to the back of his neck.  People are gleeful now, clapping, and she’s high on the attention and the scent of pine, on the taste of peppermint candy cane his lips have been toying with across the room all night.

His hands rustle the starched cotton of her blouse, and he slides his forearms around her, finding her waist again, but now with opposite hands.  He sways her hips forward into his body, bends over her like a reed with a caterpillar, like a 1940s sailor back from war, and in that moment, the room slips away, the colors fade to black and white and there is only heat. It’s couched between his arms and her body, between her body and his, generating at her center and spreading to the roots of her hair she keeps meaning to dye, the tips of her toenails she needs to repaint.  The fabric of their two thin work shirts burns up in the infrared and she imagines she can feel her nipples tracing the indentations of his abdominal muscles.

His hands have moved up – one between her shoulder blades and one tangling up into her hair – when she finally pulls back for breath, shakes him off like a snow storm, raises her eyebrows at the crowd of gawking coworkers like “What? That old thing?” and they laugh.

“See you at home,” Mulder jokes loudly, a final improvised line, and she rolls her eyes dramatically. Everyone laughs like appreciative audience members before they return to their conversations, flirtations, unfinished bits of six-foot hero.   _Team players_ , she thinks with smug self-satisfaction as she slips her hands into the sleeves of her wool-cashmere blend trench. But when she pulls the belt and ties it, she can feel that five-fingered heat there at her waist again.  She walks home instead of calling a car, even though the FBI will pay for it at this time of night, even though it’s freezing out. She has all the warmth she needs.

*

She shows up at the unremarkable house twenty some-odd years later in a Hugo Boss skirt suit, a remnant from her life as a well-paid doctor rather than a civil servant (again).  They worked all the way until this evening and she left annoyed at how long they managed to discuss a potentially possessed Douglass Fir that turned out to be teenagers pranking their parents in retribution for the Santa Claus business.  

Standing on her old porch, she rolls her right foot onto the edge of her shoe like a stranger and knocks on the door, nervous that she’s misinterpreted something, that this is a big mistake.  Tomorrow is Christmas and she doesn’t even have a change of clothes, but it doesn’t matter.  She won’t be here long.  Half her things are still here.  One of these two pieces of logic should serve.

When he doesn’t answer, she chews her cheek, wondering what she thinks she’s accomplishing, whether she’s just succumbing to holiday loneliness, whether it’s fair to him or either of them.  

“See you at home,” he said as they parted ways in the parking garage, and at first she thought it was an accident, a tic, like answering “you too” when a clerk thanks you for shopping at their store, or calling an ex “babe” when you’re worried or frustrated.  But as she turned her ignition and fastened her seatbelt, she remembered the party, remembered the feeling of his hands at her waist, holding her that way for the first time, and she drove all the way to the middle of nowhere to his home.  Their home.  What the hell.  It’s Christmas.

She tries not to seem too relieved when he answers.  He’s already undressed, in his t-shirt and flannel pants, though he’s fresh-shaven and his hair is combed. Even now that he’s happy to see her, even with the reference accurately acknowledged, she expects to have to explain herself. Instead, he moves out of the way like he’s been expecting her, like he’s been expecting this ever since the day she left.

The house is the disaster she expects it to be – dishes days old in the sink, laundry folded in piles on the steps - but in the living room, there’s a Christmas tree with multi-colored lights, her favorite fuzzy blanket folded neatly over the back of the couch, and a fresh fire in the fireplace.  She marvels and he marvels at her marveling, until he finally goes to poke the fire and she finds a box next to the tree with her nativity set.  In silence, they go about their tasks on their knees – he, spreading embers in even piles with the poker, she placing Wise Men at their posts.  Like nothing has ever gone wrong in this living room, no rash words shouted, nothing thrown, nothing lost.

Upon completion, she looks at him, finds he’s already looking at her and it’s only a matter of warm marshmallowey minutes before he is lying bare-assed on her fuzzy blanket on the floor and she is riding him topless with her Hugo Boss skirt pushed up around her hips, fire hot on her back.  Their hands move to all the usual places, and he’s inside her, and his mouth is here and then there, and he’s beautiful lying there looking up at her like that, but finally, when he’s tired and wants her to come, it’s something simple that tells her.  His hands settle in the dips of her waist, begging her body not to shy away, steadying her like a cup so he can fill her fully and finally.  Shadows flicker on her skin as the flame licks and whips behind her and her scalp is damp with sweat when she moves her own hand into her hair, but the hottest place in the room is under his fingertips.  

“Tighter,” she says. He does it, squeezes her there at either side of her belly button, digs into the fleshy tops of her hips, and he moans her name when she comes, then again when he does.

When she finally rolls over onto her back, arms splayed out at her sides, too hot to be pressed against him, she asks, “What are we doing?”

He glances up at the ceiling, and she lulls her face upward, smiles when she sees the mistletoe hanging over her head.

“You just happened to be sitting there, Scully,” he jokes and she takes his hand, kisses it right where it smells of sticky pine sap and charcoal and her body.  She holds it against her chest, feels her heart beat against his smooth, hard knuckles.  There are a dozen jokes she could make back at him, but the only one she’s thinking of is the one he made twenty or so years ago.   _See you at home._


End file.
